


Collapse

by AnnetheCatDetective



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Eddie Kaspbrak is a Mess, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gallows Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Internalized Homophobia, Loss of Virginity, M/M, Richie Tozier is a Mess, unresolved childhood trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-29
Updated: 2020-05-29
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:33:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24432886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnetheCatDetective/pseuds/AnnetheCatDetective
Summary: Richie and Eddie get caved in, they're pretty sure they're going to die anyway... so what's a little sex between friends?Maybe kind of a lot. And a little emotional honesty between friends is a lot more. But with nothing left to do but hold onto each other, things open up.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 21
Kudos: 169
Collections: Hurt Comfort Exchange 2020





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**Author's Note:**

  * For [darlingargents](https://archiveofourown.org/users/darlingargents/gifts).



> Okay this is LATE but I wanted to do an extra treat fill when I saw all the prompts, and...
> 
> I guess it's not a traditional 'fuck or die' scenario, like the clown doesn't show up and TELL them to fuck? But fucking very much saves their lives.

“I think we should have sex.” Eddie says. It doesn’t sound like a very Eddie thing to say, though it does sound like the preamble to every wet dream Richie’s ever had since discovering what sex might be, like he’s pretty sure that the boy he’d dream about in his upper teens and through college and the man he’s dreamed about since have all just been his brain’s attempt at aging Eddie up.

He never did get him quite right, the real Eddie’s even better.

Even awkwardly-lit by the flashlight on Richie’s phone, propped against a small rock between them, the real Eddie’s better.

But the real Eddie is, as far as Richie knows, straight? And he’s supposed to think Richie is straight, for that matter, though if he’s actually down for fulfilling a lifelong dream and they’re going to die in a cave in under the damn house on Neibolt anyway, maybe he shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth.

He really wishes he was a guy who could just go with things instead of overthinking them and freaking out and saying the exact wrong thing, but it looks like he’ll die as he lived.

“How hard did I hit my head just now?” He asks. They’ve had some time for self-assessment since the initial cave-in, when he’d pushed Eddie up against the wall and shielded him. Aside from a couple small pieces of debris bouncing off the back of his shoulder or his leg, he hadn’t thought he took much damage, but who even knows?

“You didn’t.”

“How hard did you hit yours?”

“This isn’t a head injury talking, it’s a-- it’s more like a… _feeling_.” Eddie shifts, uncomfortable, where he’s crouched at Richie’s side, unwilling to just sit on the floor the way Richie is. Richie reaches over to feel the back of his head anyway, in case he’d accidentally knocked him into the wall himself. “Look, you-- hey, stop that-- Look, you used to trust me--”

“I trust you now, dude, I’m just a little shocked by the part where you think we should have sex.”

“Don’t interrupt me, asshole.” Eddie smacks his shoulder, but it’s… it’s gentle, and his hand just kind of _stays_ there after. Shifts to hold on. “You used to trust me to navigate, right? Well… that’s what this is. I’m-- navigating. And I can’t explain it. I just know… this feels right. We’re boxed in in every direction right now but we’re… Maybe the fact that we’re together is-- Look, I don’t know how this is a solution to our real problem in any practical way, but I think somehow it’s the solution to a bigger problem.”

“I trust you.” Richie nods. “Um, are you-- look, I hate that I’m, apparently, a guy with morals right now? But aren’t you married?”

Eddie pulls a face, holds up his hand, pale line where a ring isn’t. “In the technical sense, but it’s all lawyers and paperwork now. Me coming out here was kind of… the thing the split hinged on. But it was a long time coming. It’s never been… I didn’t want to reintroduce myself to everyone as a failure, okay? So I didn’t bring up the divorce, and then _you_ acted like it was such a shocker I could have been married to a woman and it hit a little close to home and I got defensive. I _shouldn’t_ have married a woman. But I was a mess. I forgot myself, Rich. I didn’t want to be alone and I didn’t want to be… _me_ , my real self, so I married a clone of my mother. You can see why I didn’t want to be honest about any of that, at what I thought was going to be a nice dinner.”

“We wouldn’t have… I mean, okay, I probably would have said something wildly inappropriate, but… we’re all Losers, man. No one would have been a dick about your divorce.”

“Yeah, well. I was just starting to get my memories back. I didn’t… it was a lot to open up about. But I am functionally single.”

“Cool cool.” He blows out a sigh. “So were you serious about the sex thing?”

“I know how crazy it sounds.”

“Well, I mean, in a lot of places you could do better, but the pickings in this gay bar are pretty slim… you could go home with me or you could wait for the queen in the big orange wig to show back up. I bet _that_ freak will take you home and do the weird stuff. Be all like _hey, baby, you know what they say about guys with big feet_? _What’s shaking, big boy, you ever had your ass eaten by a clown_?”

“That’s the _worst_ mental image.” Eddie shoves at him, doesn’t let go of him. “You’re so fucking gross.”

“I know I’m gross. I can’t figure out why you think you should have sex with me. I mean-- wait, okay, first, like-- I’m not saying no! I’m just really trying not to freak out on you right now. My only coping mechanism here is saying the worst possible things I can think of.”

“I just… I don’t want to die a coward.” 

“What?” Richie turns to look at him, really look at him. “Eddie… Eds, what? You… you are in no danger of dying a coward, my friend. If you were a coward, you wouldn’t be here. Facing all your worst fears, almost certain death, the grim spectre of getting caved in with me of all people.”

Eddie gulps. Grips harder at Richie’s shoulder. “I just don’t want to die a coward, Rich. If I don’t make it out, I want to be my own man.”

“You are.” He nods, sliding an arm around Eddie, gathering him into his lap. He’s a little surprised, even with the suggestion that they have sex, when Eddie just lets him, when Eddie curls in against him.

The height difference between them now is the same as it was then. The way Eddie fits in his arms is familiar. He remembers holding him like this once, they’d tucked themselves down into a culvert to hide from Bowers, and he’d pulled Eddie into his lap because Eddie wouldn’t sit in the dirt and water, because he had to get him down low enough that they’d be hidden behind the undergrowth around the culvert. He remembers how he’d felt with Eddie in his arms, feeling Eddie breathing hard and fast, and so much of Richie’s focus was on Eddie’s breathing, waiting for it to either ease, or kick up into an asthma attack, waiting in case he would need to carefully get his inhaler out and help him with it. But he hadn’t, he’d calmed down with Richie holding him so he didn’t have to sit in the water, so they could be scrunched down where the brush would hide the culvert’s opening, hide the two of them. And they had listened to the shouts of Bowers’ gang, as they ran back and forth overhead, but they’d been safe. And then they’d stayed there a while just to be safe, Eddie resting against Richie’s shoulder…

“The number she did on me…” He sighs, lays his head down and nestles into the crook of Richie’s neck. 

“Your wife?”

“Her, too. My mother-- beep beep, Richie.”

“I didn’t say anything yet.”

“You’ve been preemptively beeped, my dead mother is off limits.”

“Shit, dude, I didn’t-- Yeah, of course. Um… I’m sorry.” He squeezes him.

“My mother was a controlling bigot who wanted me and everyone else to believe I was sick, completely dependent on her, and lucky to have her doting care. But… she was all I had for so much of my life, so it’s… my feelings on that are complicated, let’s leave it at that.”

“Sure.”

“I felt so dirty. For crushes on boys. She made me feel so… Like I was wrong. Like it was…”

“I remember… I remember you were, like… _preoccupied_ with getting AIDS, dude, because of all her horror stories.”

“Well, my mother also believed you could catch AIDS from a toilet seat, so I don’t know how closely related that was, to… but yeah, I mean. There was this couple, well I guess I didn’t know they were a couple. Nice house, a couple blocks over. Nice garden. Nice men. Who my mother said awful things about. It wasn’t until later I could figure out why. About the time I figured out I was the same. And I wanted a nice house and a nice garden. And a man.”

“Nice man?”

“Nah. I mean, I figured I should. Well, I figured I shouldn’t want a man at all, but if I was going to, he should be… nice. But what fun is that? I had this… idea. This man I made up for myself. When I was seventeen, and I couldn’t remember the place I grew up, and all I had was my mother, who made me feel dirty, and wrong, and sick all the time. And weak. I had this idea. I guess he was a boy, then. The older I got, the older he got. This boy I dreamed up for myself, lying in bed, feeling sick. Wishing I was free. He’d come to my window. He’d take me away in his car. We’d go to California. I thought that was about as far as you could drive, without a passport. California. He’d come to my window, he’d tell me not to be sad anymore-- I didn’t have to be sad anymore. He’d make me smile, and he’d take me away. He’d be tall. He’d call me ‘baby’ and he’d call me ‘cutie’ and he’d call me ‘asshole’. If I was being one. He was never… I pictured him different, sometimes, like I was always editing the fantasy, trying to get it right, but… he was never really cool or really handsome, it was more like… about the way I’d feel with him. If he would hold me, I would be braver, and I would be stronger. You know?”

“I mean right now there’s probably no point in my continuing to pretend I’m not… like, super gay.” He says. He’d thought he’d be more afraid, saying it out loud for the first time, and to another person, no less. But next to probably dying, and with Eddie going first, it’s not so bad. Yes, his heart is hammering its way out of his chest, but he’s not gagging on bile, which kind of makes this coming out a win. “So… yeah. I know.”

“Mm, I was hoping.” Eddie presses in closer. “The sex would be a lot worse if you were straight.”

“Don’t hold your breath, I’m kind of the king of the closet cases.” He admits. “So it’s not going to be _good_. Well, it’ll be good for _me_ , I’ve got, like… zero frame of reference. You’re going to blow my fucking mind.”

He chuckles, kisses Richie’s neck. It’s not what Richie thinks a sexy neck kiss is, it’s just the closest thing for Eddie to tilt around and get. The kiss itself is barely a kiss. It still thrills him. Maybe because he’s spent his whole life since forgetting Derry not letting people touch him, maybe just because it’s Eddie. 

“I know, though.” Richie continues, one hand coming up to scratch gently through Eddie’s hair. “Pretending. Dreaming. I didn’t feel… I didn’t feel like it was _wrong_? Like… I never felt like it was a _sin_ , exactly? Not in general. I felt… I felt dirty sometimes, if-- if I was looking at a boy too much and I thought he wouldn’t want me to. Or… that it would-- that I could hurt someone, somehow, by liking him too much. I didn’t want to-- I didn’t want someone else to say I was dirty. I was afraid of what other people would think of me. Getting beaten up. Losing my friends. Putting myself out there to-- to someone, and having him hate me.”

“Our friends… they would have stuck with us. We were just too scared to see it then. And I… I was so busy hating that part of myself, burying it, disgusted by it-- it didn’t matter to me what anyone else thought on top of that, I couldn’t even go there.”

“You never gave a fuck about other people, though, you were braver than I was.”

“What, me?” Eddie laughs. “Are you sure you’re remembering the right kid?”

“I mean your mother aside, you really didn’t. I needed everyone to like me. Or really, really hate me, I guess, that was still better than nothing, but only if it was for something I did, something I could control. Not if it was just for… Laugh at me, I needed everyone to laugh at me, or shout at me, or just… I cared so much about other people’s opinions. But you? You were just… this fucking weird little kid and you owned it. And if someone didn’t like it you’d lecture them to death. You didn’t care. You were going to be weird and you were going to be kind and you were going to be an asshole and you were going to be completely insane, you were going to be _you_. And I always thought… the person you were, he was… Okay, ‘cool’ isn’t the word, but… great. I thought you were great. And I was glad you were just you. And like… I dunno. I’m sorry it took being caved in and like, definitely being about to die, for me to get to say any real stuff to you. You were the most important person in the world to me. For seven, eight years, you were the center. You know? Shit, why didn’t I say any of this… I don’t know, when it would have mattered?”

“When would that be?”

“Who even knows? When we were kids, before we split and forgot everything. Or back at the hotel. Kind of wish we’d had this whole conversation there.”

“I thought you were brave.” Eddie whispers. “Back then. You were always so ready to… if I was in trouble, you were always so ready to be in it with me. Or to be in it instead of me. I remember once you made Bowers chase you, just ‘cause he would have been coming for me. I didn’t know what to do with how that felt… I’d yell at you just to not have to deal with-- with feeling those things. Yell at you not to tease me because I couldn’t admit to myself that I liked it.”

“Yeah. Well… I always figured, if you really wanted me to stop, you’d have--”

“Beeped you. Yeah.” He laughs, kisses Richie’s neck again. It’s just as innocent as the first-- for all the talk of whether or not they should just have sex, the only kisses have been chaste ones. With death feeling kind of imminent, there’s nothing to do but cling to each other for some kind of comfort, and say all the things they never got the chance to. 

He should feel something more, about dying, but this whole thing is so much… he can’t quite fit the idea in his head, that it’s real. He’d gone into the house thinking he probably would die, he’s spent all the time he’s been back in Derry thinking he might die, and now he’s pretty sure he’s going to die, like, soon, but he has Eddie in his lap, in his arms, and it’s all he can think about.

Eddie, who says things like… like that they should take their shirts off and kiss, or that they should have sex, and then nothing actually _happens_ , but he… he isn’t just fucking with him.

“What even are we, dude?” He sighs, head thunking back against the cavern wall at his back.

“Just a couple of Losers.” Eddie says, and Eddie clings to him. “Who don’t want to die alone. Who don’t-- who don’t want to go out un-- unloved.”

“Yeah. Sounds about right. Feels fake, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“When we were kids, like… it was scarier, wasn’t it? I mean, it was like… he was gonna eat our faces, like it was legit terrifying, and we were scared that whole summer, weren’t we? I remember we were scared. We were scared of _It_. But now we’re here and, like… are we?”

“I’m too tired to be as scared as we were when we were kids.” Eddie snorts. “I’m forty, I’ve got a bedtime. Like, that I follow.”

“Nerd.” He shifts to brush his lips across Eddie’s forehead. It terrifies him more than Pennywise does, but Eddie allows the trespass. Or maybe he doesn’t consider it one. 

“I wake up at six AM, I have a hard boiled egg, a single piece of whole grain toast, and any combination of yogurt or cottage cheese and fruit and maybe granola. I work out. I have a banana, a handful of nuts, and maybe a coconut water. I shower. I go to work at a job I am good at but not especially passionate about. I come home to a life I am not passionate about. I go to bed early and most nights I have a ‘headache’ to avoid something else I have never been passionate about. So… I don’t know what we are, Rich, but here’s the thing. When I saw you, I remembered when I was passionate about my life. I remembered that I had things I wanted to be when I grew up. I remembered feeling the kind of love that’s so pure I think most people never get it, but I got it for six people, I loved six people so hard once…”

“Yeah. Yeah.”

Richie had never stopped, not really. He forgot their names and their faces but he never spackled over six holes in his heart, six people torn from him, six places where a piece of him remained. He’d dream about loving them and liking them. Eddie most of all, then Stan and Big Bill. Ben and Bev and Mike, _Mike_ , who brought it all crashing back on him, sorry-grateful for it all.

“The thing is…” Richie continues. “Coming back here, I wasn’t afraid of the fucking clown. I mean he got to me, when we were getting our tokens, he shook me up bad, but I wasn’t afraid of _It_. I wasn’t afraid a stupid fucking clown was going to rip my face off with his teeth--”

“Oh, jeez, remember--?”

“Yeah, yeah, but what I’m saying is… the stuff he had on me, like… it’s all real stuff. Real grownup stuff. It’s a competitive market, clowns just aren’t cutting it the way they used to.”

“The clown industry has really been in decline since one of them murdered a whole bunch of kids, and now they don’t even have being scary going for them anymore?”

Richie _giggles_ , and he can _feel_ Eddie’s delight in wringing such an undignified sound out of him, as if he had any dignity to begin with. The way Eddie holds him a little bit harder and hides a grin against him, and presses in just for a second with a soft little laugh. 

“I mean he showed me the real shit I’m so scared of, and like… it’s all way worse. I beat his bitch ass when we were kids, but I can’t do shit about--” He swallows hard, holds Eddie harder. “I can’t _do_ shit about the fact that there are people out there beating men like me to death for existing and I can’t do shit about my crippling fear that no one will remember me or love me, so like… yeah, sure, he whipped up the fucking… world’s most depressing vision quest or whatever, and maybe he feeds off of that, but like… he’s he least scary part. I left Derry, I live out in the real world, I’m afraid of real shit.”

“But the real shit comes from Derry. Getting bullied, getting taught wrong, watching the way adults just forgot about the kids who went missing after a while… the shit we’re scared of in the real world started here, too. I’m so afraid of dying, like… every time my body hurts in a new place, which it does all the time, because we’re fucking forty, I drive my doctor crazy thinking I’m dying. I’m so afraid of e. coli and heart disease and cancer and-- yes-- AIDS, and _all_ that shit, and now I’m literally going to die and I’m… not? I’m not afraid. What’s up with that?”

“You hit your limit, dude. You got stabbed in the fucking face, like… you got this far, we ran from shit, and now-- like, you got it right earlier, we’re just too tired to be this scared for this long.” Richie shrugs. “Like… you work out every day at least, but me? If I had the choice between certain death and running for ten minutes? I’d probably take my chances in a fist fight with the clown. Running _sucks_.”

“Running doesn’t suck, you suck.” Eddie gives him a playful shove, though with Eddie in his lap and his back up against the wall, it doesn’t accomplish much. Really, it just means Eddie’s hand is spread out against his side. 

“ _You_ suck.” He digs in at Eddie’s ribs, tickling him-- not where Eddie’s _really_ ticklish, because that knowledge has all come back to him, he remembers all Eddie’s ticklish spots and he remembers that he used to avoid them. Partly because he was never trying to get kicked in the face, partly because he wanted it to be _fun_ , and a wrestling match/tickle fight was only fun if no one was actively dying, and he used to worry, a little, sometimes. Eddie would get to laughing uncontrollably and then he’d wheeze and Richie would panic, and then Eddie would get his breath back and call him an asshole… so he’d sort of made a secret gentleman’s agreement with himself, even though he knew which spots would grant him an instant win. 

Of course, it turned out Eddie never had asthma as a kid, it was just the normal kind of wheezing anyone might do if he was laughing too hard, but still. Still.

“Congratulations, you’re exactly as mature as you were the last time we did this.” Eddie’s hand slips around to his stomach to get him back.

“Are you kidding? I think I’m _less_ mature. Okay-- hey-- hey--”

Somewhere, in with the tickling and the squirming and the way Eddie laughs against his neck and the fact that he’s in Richie’s _lap_ , it happens. Which he guesses is another awkward reminder of being thirteen.

“Oh.” Eddie freezes, noticing exactly what’s pressing into his thigh.

“Sorry.”

“... Does this mean the sex idea is a go?” 

Richie laughs, grateful. He’s not sure he could have made the joke himself this time. “I don’t know, man.”

“Little Richard says yes.”

“Did you just name my dick? After the guy who did Tutti-Frutti?”

“I mean…” Eddie shrugs. This time, when he kisses Richie’s neck, it’s slow, and it’s deliberate, and it’s wet. “As long as this is for _me_ , and not because you have some kind of weird tickling fetish…”

“If you’re going to belittle my fetish, I’m taking my dick and my balls and going home.” Richie says, and he’s no longer sure where to put his hands, but Eddie laughs, between lingering kisses that travel up his neck to his jaw, and every laugh he can get from Eddie is a win. 

“If you could go home, you’d take me with you.”

“To clarify, I don’t-- I don’t have a tickling fetish. I just-- you’re in my lap, dude, and I love making you laugh, and I’ve never… I never had this for myself. Holding a guy who kisses my neck and-- shit, you know?”

“You’ve really never, with a guy?” Eddie asks-- Eddie _purrs_ , when did Eddie become a fucking sex kitten? And there’s something so teenage about the phrasing, but then, they never got to do this as teenagers. “Well, you should get to.”

And he really can’t handle this. It was one thing when it was just something he said and it was maybe going to happen and maybe not and they were just talking, but now Eddie is shifting in his lap and nibbling on his ear and Richie can’t handle this.

“Rich?” Eddie pulls back. He moves to straddle Richie’s lap, even though it means putting his knees on the ground, because it lets him put a little more space between them, lets him meet Richie’s eyes. “You okay? Look-- if-- if the answer’s no…”

“No! I mean-- I don’t-- I mean, I want--” Why can’t he breathe? Why isn’t he done being afraid of this?

“Shh…” Eddie pushes his hair back, gentle, strokes his forehead, then his cheek. His other hand rests over Richie’s heart, one finger taps out a steady rhythm until Richie’s heartbeat slows to match. “You’re okay, you’re safe.”

There’s a beat, and they both burst out laughing. Richie’s arms come back up around him, Eddie lets himself fall forward, his head to Richie’s shoulder once more.

“Okay, well… you know what I mean.” He snuggles in, then pulls back again to look at Richie, soft and serious. “Sorry, if I came on too strong there. I just… everything we’ve said, I don’t know. I feel… close to you. And I feel like I’m finally _free_. And I guess I just assumed you felt what I felt.”

“I always felt close to you.” Richie cups his uninjured cheek. “And I really want you. But I mean I _never_ , and like… I don’t know, man. Dying is easy, intimacy is hard.”

“Never never?” Eddie’s eyebrows climb, and Richie groans, head thunking back against the wall again. “Hey, sorry, not judging. Really not judging!”

“Don’t lie to me, I just told you I’m a forty year old virgin, you’re judging me.”

“I’m not.” Eddie’s hand is warm and gentle against his neck. “Richie, come on. I have _so_ many better things to judge you for, that’s not even on the list. Like this shirt.”

“What about _your_ shirt?”

“There’s nothing wrong with _my_ shirt.”

“There’s nothing right with it, either. Like… I don’t know. It’s not _you_.”

“I’m not me.” Eddie shrugs. “I haven’t been. In a long time.”

“That’s really fucking sad, Eds.” Eddie just gives him a look, and Richie shrugs. “Touche.”

“I want to be. I want to go out as myself, and I want to go out… I want, just once, to be with someone I love. And I really am done being scared.”

“Well, I’m not. I’m not brave, I’m not done, I’m-- This is… like, okay, okay, uh, cards on the table this is it for me, you’ve been it for me, my whole life. We were, what, we were seven? And I fell in love with you? You told this kid how many diseases he could get eating pill bugs in the sandbox, and like, the sand which you refused to touch, and I was just like… I don’t know, I’m not saying it was love at first sight, but I wanted to know you, and then I knew you better than anyone, and then I was so gone. And now you’re here and you actually want to do this thing and I’m… terrified.”

“Having sex cannot be scarier than the clown.”

“I think we’ve established a lot of things are honestly scarier than the clown.”

“Yeah, fuck that guy, right?” Eddie chuckles. “What a loser.”

“Oh man, he wishes. We’re Losers and we’re cooler than that guy.”

“Yeah, apparently I’m scarier, too.”

“Funnier.” 

“Debatable.” He grins, softens the blow by reaching up to take Richie’s glasses, slips them into his shirt pocket. “Let me kiss you. One real kiss. And then you can see if you feel any braver, or if you want me to get off.”

“I’d have to be so much braver than I am right now to get you off, dude.”

“Off your lap, asshole. Let me kiss you first. If that’s it… cool. I will honestly die maybe happy, because we had this talk and because I got to kiss you just once, which I think I owe to my old self, because he thought about it a lot.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I had my first, like… big gay moment of panic at the quarry, back when it was just the four of us, and I said I had to leave right away because… I don’t know, I think I said something about giardia. And I ran home to have a crisis about wanting to kiss you.”

“Huh. I think my first crisis was over your legs.”

“Can I kiss you?”

Richie takes a deep breath. “Yeah. We, uh… we owe ourselves this. Before we kick it.”

He still winds up hysterically giggling the first couple of times Eddie leans in.

“Really?”

“Sorry! It’s not you! I just… I don’t know, I waited too long. And I am definitely not, like… my best self. I don’t work out, and I don’t eat cottage cheese, and I don’t go to bed or get up at reasonable or even consistent hours and I didn’t get hot and now I’m… wow, okay, okay, not panicking.”

“You don’t think you got hot?”

“Ben got hot, I got… weird.”

“Ben’s got, like… a really great body.” Eddie nods.

“Right?”

“But you’re _hot_.”

“No.” He snorts.

“To me. And, like, to a not insubstantial number of people on Twitter.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, fucking google yourself sometime.” Eddie laughs, and kisses his cheek. “There are thirst tweets.”

“About _this_?” Richie gestures frantically to himself, and Eddie catches one of his hands mid-sweep.

“About _these_ , specifically. There’s a whole account that’s just pictures of your hands.”

“... Wait, how do _you_ know that?” He asks, only for Eddie to raise an eyebrow at him. “Really? Shit, dude.”

“Maybe we’re past the point where we call each other ‘dude’?” Eddie suggests. “I might have had a secret twitter account for following gay news, shirtless firemen, and your hands.”

“Wow. Um… wow. Wow.”

This time, when Eddie leans in, Richie is too caught up trying to process the idea of being the subject of thirst tweets to burst out in fear-laughter, and when Eddie’s lips find his, he stops thinking about thirst tweets, too. 

Eddie moves Richie’s hands to his waist, they slip down to fit naturally at his hips, to hold him. For all that the idea may have panicked him before they’d started, kissing Eddie _works_. Kissing Eddie feels good. Eddie coaxes him gently into taking the lead, and he’s comfortable with that, it can’t spiral out of control if he sets the pace, it can’t panic him if he takes charge. And it’s not like he can disappoint Eddie by taking things too slow, too gentle-- not when Eddie has a hole in his face to worry about.

“Baby…” He sighs, and Eddie kisses him again, which he takes to mean ‘baby’ is better than ‘dude’. “Mm, baby-- baby, were-- were we gonna take our shirts off for this?”

“There’s nowhere to put them.” He laughs, but he lets Richie push his shirt up, hands roaming over his abs, his chest.

“I can’t believe we’re going to die in a cave in and you’re worried your shirt-- which is already, like, pretty fucking ruined, babe-- is going to get _dirty_. Holy shit, are these your abs? Is this what happens when you work out and eat cottage cheese? Okay, you’re right, we should keep our shirts on, don’t even touch mine.”

“What? No, come on. I want to see you.” And he goes so far as to pick up the phone with its flashlight.

“I hope you’re not expecting me to have abs.”

“I don’t want you to have abs. I want you to have a _dick_.” He says, and immediately winces.

“Well I’ve got some good news for you…”

“Please forget I said that, that was supposed to be sexy and it came out really weird.”

“Yeah, no, if we somehow don’t die here I’m telling _everyone_ about that. _So I’m in this cave in, right? That I miraculously escape somehow. And I’m making out with my boyfriend for the first time, and my boyfriend is very sexy, but he is very bad at talking dirty, because he says to me ‘I hope you have a dick’_ \--”

“First of all, I didn’t say I hope you had one, I said I wanted-- okay, you know what, I’ve accepted my death completely because seriously, you cannot tell people about this.”

“You already met my dick, you named it after the Innovator, the Originator, the Architect of Rock and Roll.”

“I wouldn’t say I’ve ‘met’ it, and if you want to make that introduction any time soon--”

“You know exactly how to shut me up.” Richie grins, pokes at Eddie’s chest twice. “I’m calling your bluff, you like me like this.”

Eddie stares him down a long moment, his face all shadows until he sets the phone back down, and they’re close enough that he’s not just a blur, that Richie can see him at war with himself.

“Go ahead, Eddie-bear--”

“Okay, don’t-- ‘Eddie-bear’ goes under the category of--”

“Right, mom shit, got it.” He mimes locking his tight-closed lips. “See, you preemptively beeped me on that shit. You’re not beeping me now.”

“I can think of other ways of shutting you up.” Eddie rolls his eyes, leaning forward. His arms slide around Richie’s shoulders, he waits just millimeters away from his lips. “So… boyfriend, huh?”

“I mean whatever you want to call it.”

“If we don’t die?”

“If we don’t die.” Richie nods.

“If we don’t die, let’s just go to Vegas and have an impulsive and poorly thought out wedding. While we’re still riding this high, before we remember how to be afraid again.”

“I’m pretty sure your divorce has to go through before you can marry someone else, I am pretty sure you would not even be asking if you believed we were going to live, and I’m pretty sure you would not enjoy anything about being in Las Vegas, but you know what? I’m going to take you up on that. Let’s not even date, if we get out of this, you’re my husband now, I won you off your wife by having this massive dick and now you’re mine.”

“Massive, huh?” Eddie licks his lips, one hand moving to hover between them, waiting on permission. “So do I get to…? I mean, are you still freaking out about this or are we good?”

“I mean it’s kind of my last chance.” Richie starts, and then there’s a groaning of rocks shifting, mercifully not right over them. “Oh shit, like maybe right now, okay. Okay, so we’re… probably not gonna run out of oxygen, shit.”

“Shit.” Eddie agrees, clinging a little tighter. “Okay, now I’m-- I’m freaking out a little again. That’s healthy, right? Being afraid of death is normal?”

“No, no, we’re done with that, we’re not thinking about that.” Richie guides him back in for a kiss, hand at the back of his head. Desperate, desperate to chase away any more thoughts about being caved in and what might happen.

Even if their friends could dig them out if they found them from the other side of the debris, they don’t have any cell reception down here, they’d realized that early on, and Richie had made the decision to let his battery run down for the sake of the flashlight, even though Eddie is a grown man who is probably not still afraid of the dark.

He doesn’t want to think about being crushed to death. There’s really nothing he can do about it, either it’s going to happen or it isn’t, and he can’t… if the chamber they’re in collapses further, if it all comes down on them, then he can’t save Eddie. If it really all collapses, he can’t just press him into the wall or lie over him on the ground and keep him from getting flattened. He’d just be getting flattened into him.

Which, as ways to die go, would not be his least favorite. 

It beats bursting into flames on the crosstown bus.

But he’s not going to think about dying, he’s _not_ , there is so much shit he does not want to think about right now. He’s not thinking about the clown, he’s not thinking about how he hatcheted a guy to death earlier, he’s not thinking about being cut off from the rest of their friends by a cave in, he’s only thinking about three things.

He’s thinking about kissing Eddie, first and foremost. Thinking about Eddie’s lips, thinking about the way Eddie kisses back, and how he yields-- enough to make Richie feel safe, but not too much. Eddie’s tongue, just a little, Eddie’s tongue tracing over his lower lip, and Eddie holding onto him, Eddie warm in his arms, Eddie’s mouth and how careful he is with Eddie, who’s been stabbed in the fucking face and who wants to kiss him.

He’s also thinking about the entire discography of Little Richard, though he’s not trying to, and he’s very much trying to think about the principal value of the arccosecant, because he doesn’t know shit about baseball and he would very much like to not come in his pants while kissing Eddie, but he’s never gotten this far with anybody and the adrenaline’s been coursing through him and every emotion that came flooding back on him…

“I don’t want to die alone.” He admits, holding on tight, pressing his cheek to Eddie’s, Eddie’s good side. “I don’t want to die afraid. You remember me, so-- so navigate. Show me who I am, I want to go as myself. For once in my life I want to just be me, and I wanna be me with you. You knew the best me I think I’ve ever been. Depressing as that might be.”

“You’re not alone.” Eddie promises. “We are us. You told me, you told me I’m braver than I think, well so are you. You always were, for me.”

“Can we… like, can we just? Can we have sex now?”

“Yeah.” Eddie kisses his jaw, gentle. Follows it with a caress. Slides a hand up under his shirt and kisses his neck, and this time when Eddie kisses his neck, it’s very different from those softer, chaster kisses. “Yes, god, please.”

A little more heavy petting-- does anyone call it that? Why does anyone call it that?-- and Eddie gets his pants open, gets a hand on him, gets his dick out--

Lets go of him to grab for the phone again, turning the flashlight towards Richie’s lap.

“Bro, seriously?”

“How come I can’t call you ‘dude’ because it’s not romantic enough, but you can whip ‘bro’ out at me?” Richie asks.

“I’ll whip something out at you in a minute. Shit, I’m a little intimidated now, actually. Fuck, for real? And-- look, I get… You know that thing where you’re really turned on by a guy so you try to sound aggressively heterosexual?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, I forgot I didn’t have to do that. In my defense, I didn’t realize that was all-- that you were so--”

“Oh, yeah. It’s not my fault you always think I’m joking about my massive wang, dude. _Babe_.”

“Can we survive this?” Eddie gives him a look that’s entirely too earnest. “Can we get out of here? Because I need stitches. And a course of antibiotics. And… like, time. Like, I couldn’t give a blowjob like this regardless, it would be a bad fucking idea neither of us would enjoy, but that’s… you’ve got a really nice dick, dude. And I just did it again, yeah, I hear myself.”

“Yeah, I would like you to call me something cute and romantic, actually.” Richie teases, cupping Eddie’s chin, tilting him up to be kissed. “Come on, baby.”

“I-- I’ve never… I’ve never called a guy something cute. Like… like what? Like… sugar?”

“Maybe not. You know what, it doesn’t matter, just call me by my name--”

“No, no. I want to call you something cute. You’re cute, I want-- you know? _Mój misiu_.”

“What’s that?”

“I have _no_ fucking idea, it’s something my nana used to call gramps, which I didn’t-- I didn’t even remember either of them until this weekend, at all, so. For all I know it means sugar anyway, and for all I know it means ‘hey asshole’ and to be honest either one works. Okay? Is it cute?”

“Asshole works.” Richie shrugs. “Honestly, anything you want works. So… what are we doing here? Tell me you know what we’re doing. Beyond living to bang another day, god willing.”

“We’ve gotta move away from the wall so I can get closer to you.”

Richie nods, and they get each other up, Richie giving Eddie a hand up from below and Eddie tugging him up to follow. He lays his jacket down under them when they re-situate-- everything he’s wearing is probably done for, anyway. He’s probably done for. 

Eddie settles in his lap again, this time, this time way closer. Without a wall to stop them, Eddie has someplace he can put his legs, and once he’s got his own cock out, he’s able to slide forward, to get the two of them together.

“Don’t be scared, Richie, sweetheart, and neither will I.” He whispers, wrapping his arms around him. “Not of anything, not anymore. Not with you. Just touch me. Let’s pretend we’re far away.”

“At the townhouse.” Richie wraps a hand around the both of them, groaning. The feel of him… the feel of Eddie, firm and hot and pulsing pressed up against him, how tight they both are in his grip, how much he’s already leaking, and maybe it’s not all him. “Not even in a room, like, just down in the deserted bar, on the floor.”

“In the backseat of your car, past the county line.” Eddie leaves one arm around Richie’s shoulder, but he gets his own hand down between them, cups his hand over the head of Richie’s cock, massages little circles over it. Each one of Richie’s strokes only covers the length of Eddie’s cock, and Eddie works over how much of his own he leaves exposed.

“The bathroom on the plane--”

“ _Gross_.”

“In first class!”

“California--”

“I have a place there. Going back, after Chicago. I’d take you-- _fuuuck_ , take you with me…”

“Yeah?” Eddie nips at his lower lip. “You got a pool? We could fuck by the pool…”

“Nah-- near the-- oh wow, you feel, oh boy-- near the ocean. We’ll fuckin’, From Here to Eternity that shi- _it_.”

“No way, do you know how much _Aspergillus_ there is on the, in the sand, on the beach? Shit, yeah, little faster, your hands are so fucking big, go ahead and touch me…”

“Babe--” Richie squeezes Eddie’s ass, which seems to be the right move, though not so right as to stop him.

“ _Aspergillus_ causes lung infections, okay? I just got done having fake asthma, I don’t need a real lung infection.” He lectures, despite not removing his mouth from Richie’s throat.

“Babe, we’re not actually-- like, can I-- _fucking shit_ , _Eddie_ \-- fantasize here?”

“Oh, you like that?”

“Uh-huh.” He says, a little higher than he means to, and a lot shakier. 

“I’m gonna give you a hickey.” Eddie grins against him. “Mm, you want that, Rich? Want me to mark you up?”

“Wanna give you one, too.” He nods. 

“Fucking do it.” Eddie throws his head back. “Shit, Richie… yeah, yeah, do it.”

The rocks grind and shift somewhere along the collapsed wall as he does, and Richie doesn’t care. He doesn’t care about anything but the little noises Eddie makes when he uses his teeth, when he squeezes his ass, and the way Eddie’s cock feels trapped against his own, and the smell of sex, and Eddie’s palm sliding over the head of his cock, his whole world is Eddie, Eddie, Eddie. His blood pounds _Eddie_ and his brain lights up with Eddie and every breath he draws in is filled with Eddie, and his orgasm hits him sudden and surprising, he doesn’t know the last time it’s _surprised_ him, but he comes into Eddie’s palm hard and drips down the both of them and Eddie whines, desperate, and so Richie shifts to jack him off, kisses his waiting mouth, holds him close and loves him. Doesn’t worry about the mess, no reason to worry about the mess, when Eddie comes over his fist. If they both clean off with the hem of his tee shirt, it hardly matters much.

“Not bad.” Eddie pants, kisses him. 

“For a first time or for a handy?”

“That was… more than just a handjob.” He lays his head against Richie’s shoulder. “That was us.”

“Eddie?” He fumbles for his phone, aims the flashlight towards where the dark seems darker. “Eddie, shit, look--”

Eddie pulls away a little, one hand gripping Richie’s shirt as he turns to look at the open tunnel.

“What the fuck?”

“Did we… do that?”

“Did we fuck a tunnel out of the cave in into existence? Is that what you’re asking me, Rich?”

“Well? You’re the navigator, baby.”

“At this point I don’t even know if weirder things have happened today or not.” He admits, using Richie’s shoulder to get up to his feet before offering a hand. “We’d better try and find the others. Shit, hon, you… like, _clearly_ got jacked off, you’re fucking covered in it.”

“You’re the one who fucking covered me.” He tucks himself back in. “I mean, is that a problem? Because I’m pretty gross all over and everything down here stinks and it’s dark, so I don’t know if it’s really that obvious. Is it?”

“We’ll deal.” Eddie nods. “We’re alive, we’ll deal. I mean-- yeah?”

“Yeah. We’re alive.” Richie offers his hand. Eddie takes it. “We’ll deal.”


End file.
